


Hector in Anime Shades

by wizardslexicon



Category: Homestuck
Genre: A Strong Inspiration By Homer's Iliad, Alien Invasion, As Well As Movies Of Considerable Nostalgic Appeal, Gen, Gratuitous Reference to Ancient Internet Memes, Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 20:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2481182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizardslexicon/pseuds/wizardslexicon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out and through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall and glut grim Mars with his life's blood."</p><p>—Achilles, prince of the Myrmidons</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hector in Anime Shades

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to dedicate this fic to the creators of the Homestuck Work Skin.

A sharp needle point in the side was sufficient to wake up the warmth-drowsed boy sitting in the cheap chair next to the needle-bearer, even if it didn’t rouse any reaction beyond slightly better posture.

“I swear to God, Rose,” started the boy, rubbing his arid-camo uniform where the needle point had pressed into it, but the girl to his side shushed him quickly.

“You’re going to want to hear what Doc Brinner has to say,” she told him, and Dave turned his head to look at the doctor in question, the most precious resource and de facto leader of their band. The group of soldiers, typically fluctuating between five and nine members, had been traveling God knew how long, but Brinner, Rose, and Dave had been there from the beginning, when the Human Liberation Army had finally been dispersed by hunterrorists. They’d been one of thousands of fragments of the movement that went nomad to escape execution.

“My grandparents were _there_ ,” Brinner was saying. “At New Peoria, when the walls fell. They said there was a fighter who was worth twenty pissed-off subjugglators; this motherfucker—” Brinner paused. Too many here had watched subjugglators tear apart their friends. “Sorry. This guy was the most absolutely insane, top notch soldier in the movement. They say he killed half the units that went up on New Peoria single-handedly.”

“What was his name?” asked Rose, leaning forward with her lips parted. She was always one to feed on stories, and she could quote them word for word years later. Even Dave, despite himself, started paying attention.

“I don’t know his given name, but our old unit, best of the best in the HLA, was named after his family—Strider.” Here he nodded to Dave and Rose, who’d been orphans when they were snatched up by the Army and had subsequently taken the name of their unit as their family one. “It all started on the 6th of December, they told me...”

 

“Get the goddamn Helmsman online!” shouted the head threshcutioner into his suit’s mic. All his comrades flinched as his volume hit them with a wall of static interference. “ _No_ , I don’t give a shit about when Captor last got his suit cleaned, if you don’t get him jamming all frequencies on the ground they’ll be cleaning your thinkpan off the cockpit! Vantas out!” Snap, snap, snap—the synaptic suit closed over his head and tightened on his wrists and ankles. He picked up his sickle. “All threshies, two minutes to dropdown! That’ll make Captor cream his pants, eh?” Muttered laughter on the feed greeted his joke. No one much liked Sergeant Vantas, but they couldn’t deny he had a way of making them want to fight behind him.

“Karkat, I’m dropping you a few hundred yards from the walls,” came Rear Admiral Serket’s voice over a private line. It was her ship, the 8r8k Spider, that Karkat had been assigned to. “They’ve got some kind of artillery, and I can’t risk the ship that much closer than here. Try not to get your ass kicked by a bunch of monkeys this time, mmkay?” She cackled on the line for exactly eight seconds. “Vriska out, pupa!” Karkat resisted the urge to spit. He hadn’t been deployed last time, but despite his overseeing them by radio they’d all been slaughtered, unusual for a raid on such a pathetic species. Sending him out with his personal new unit, the Vicious Insurgency Patrol, was Command’s way of letting him know he wasn’t wanted if he couldn’t do it in one above par.

“Five seconds!” he yelled over the unit frequency. The underbelly of the ship lowered into a ramp, beneath which only open air and, far below, scrubby land could be seen. Karkat ran one last diagnostic check on his synaptic suit, and all equipment was cleared. He began to step towards the edge. When he reached it and the timer hit zero, he turned to look at his subordinates, and barked out, “Yo, V.I.P.!” before letting himself fall off.

“Let’s kick it!” shouted back his unit, the unit chant they’d learned when they were assigned springing easily to their lips as they followed Karkat into the open air. The roar of air from outside the suit obscured the snap of unfolding parachutes. Karkat carefully steered himself down to the ground below, breathing slow to alleviate his old fear of heights. He could afford to panic where people could hear him.

As soon as he hit the ground, he said “Retrieve parachute”, and his suit reeled the sturdy spidersilk cloth back into itself. As he turned around, his soldiers were being joined on the ground by another unit, less heavily equipped and armed with pulse rifles and with sharp black claws tipping the ends of the partial suits they wore.

“Hey, Karkitty!” chirped Sergeant Leijon of the Jolly Rogues, one of the few hunterrorist squadrons still remaining extraterrestrial. Most of the others were hunting the fragments of resistance in other places. Karkat rolled his eyes, thanking God that she’d said that on a private line.

“Nepeta, can we not do the asinine bullshit today? Let’s just...” He switched to a universal frequency. “March!” His troops fell in step behind him, while he lead as per tradition. The walls of New Peoria loomed above them, easily surmountable with the heavy guns the threshcutioners had brought with them, but for some reason unusually well defended by the humans who lay behind them. _Well_ , Karkat thought, _guess I’ll see the reason soon_.

 

“Dirk.” The woman in formal uniform at the door held out a sword to him, the first one he’d ever held and the only one he’d ever used. He’d long since decided the thing had to be unbreakable, since he’d cut rocks in half with it. He took it from Roxy by the handle, and sighed.

“But _mom_ ,” he said, face expressionless. “Do I _have_ to?”

“Get out there, Achilles,” replied Roxy.

 

“Artillery shells inbound,” came a collective mutter through the radio.

“Thanks, I fucking noticed,” replied Karkat, looking up at the red streaks in the air above them. “Disperse, we’re sitting quackbeasts out here.” He heard the stamp of boots on dry soil as his orders were obeyed by all but the hunterrorists, who didn’t march in file anyway.

“Karkitty!” shrieked Nepeta, accidentally over the public line, but everyone was too distracted by what had astonished her to laugh: one of the shells had _split in goddamn half_ , and one of the sides was flying towards a brace of hunterrorists while the other careened off uselessly at a far angle.

The boom as the half shell landed didn’t knock anyone off their feet, but Karkat saw some of his people pointing: both to a line of humans with their solid ammo rifles approaching in the distance, and to some black shape flying from where the first shell had split to another one, which shortly went the same way.

“What the _shit_ —” said Karkat, before the humans opened fire and he was flipping his pulse rifle up to his shoulder. He didn’t even have to aim; it’d been designed using Eridan’s god rifle, and even though it didn’t have quite that level of power, it was plenty—his first shot pierced the human ranks like a sickle in a throat. His trolls opened fire, too, their suits sufficient to prevent serious bullet wounds at this range. They’d cleaned up the ground humans in a matter of minutes. In the absence of cover, firepower did fine.

The shelling didn’t stop, though, even as the splittings did.  Karkat kept his eyes on the black shape when it stopped moving, and when the shell it was riding hit the ground and exploded, he watched a decidedly trolloid shape flit out of the smoke.

“Surround that!” he yelled, and a few of his trolls followed his orders immediately. “Hold your fire until you can see what you’re shooting!” It was an order he would regret for the rest of his life.

The sword burst out of a synaptic suit’s back coated in olive blood, then it was gone, along with its blurred wielder. Karkat’s eyes could hardly tell what was going on, but oh god five heads hit the ground before he even swung up his rifle, what the fuck was that thing? _Can subjugglators even go that fast?_ he thought, pulling the trigger. He saw a brief slowdown, and a human with wild white hair and pointy shades collapsed into focus, riding a rocketboard like he was a surfer catching a wave with a simple sword in one hand.

The human stuck a backflip, and at the zenith of the arc the beam hit his sword and _reflected_ , hitting the VIP as hard as it had the humans. Karkat whipped out his sickle. “

“Engage hand to hand!” he shouted over the comm. line. “He’s got anti-pulse weaponry, but it’s just one fucking human, let’s go!” The human landed his board in the ground and held his sword out in front of him as threshies surrounded him. Unbelievably, he grinned with all 32 weak human teeth.

“How are you, gentlemen! All your base are belong to us.”

“Fuck did you say?” shouted Karkat, rolling up his mask.

“You have no chance to survive, make your time!” yelled Dirk, burst into raucous laughter, and vanished. Behind a hunterrorist, sword through their kidney, slicing outward for a near bisection, vanishing, beheading, kicking the head into another troll’s mask before coming down on them—Karkat could keep up, but for the moment, confusion and a brief high on the oxygen-rich atmosphere prevented him from acting. His visor shut again automatically, and he breathed in the rich oxygen-heavy, low-nitrogen air native to Alternia. His head cleared in seconds, and just in time. His sickle blocked a blow from the human’s sword that would have cut him in half from shoulder to hip.

“Sergeant!” came a cry from the comm. line, and then one of his men fly-tackled the human, who suplexed him easy as breathing, cut his throat, and ran off somewhere else to deal death, like Hector in pointy black glasses defending his city against the gray-skinned Greeks. Karkat heard Nepeta on the public line grunting with exertion, then an exhalation, a little disbelieving _huh?_ , and “Karkitty, I always wanted to tell you, I’m—” followed by the sound of metal punching through the helmet.

Sweat dripped down Karkat’s face. He turned his head to where he’d last seen her: Nepeta’s synaptic suit lay facedown on the ground, olive blood pooling beneath the head.

“For great goddamn justice, kill this barkbeast’s grub!” screamed Karkat, and his trolls, men and women of shades yellow to teal, charged forward and fell one by one to the human’s sword until only Karkat was left. He shook, raising his sickle as the ground, softened by blood, slid under his feet. His helmet rolled up.

“Let me go, human. Just...have mercy. I surrender.” Dirk turned to leave, and Karkat whipped his rifle up, fired, and watched as the beam carved nothing. The sword came out of his chest as he looked down.

“Good try, Klaatu” were the last words he ever heard.

 

“So if he was that good, how did we lose the war?” asked Rose, when Brinner had paused to take a drink of water. “I mean, a whole unit of threshcutioners _and_ hunterrorists? He was like Achilles!” Brinner laughed, still a little hoarse.

“The thing you find out when you’re truly excellent, is that there’s always someone better.”

 

“What are these things?” muttered Roxy, dropping her rifle from eye level. The line of massive shapes, still humanoid but marching in perfect rank and file through bullets, shells, and land mines, drew nearer and nearer to the wall. Dirk waited for the order to engage them, to see the blood color of the latest creatures to fall to him. “They look like trolls, but they’re huge and...juggalos?”

“Ha, what,” said Dirk, almost smiling. “Alien juggalos? Now I’ve seen it all.”

“Shhh,” said Roxy, flapping a hand in his direction. “They’re saying something.” She was right. If Dirk focused, he could just hear a low muttering rising from the horde, sending a chill up his unwilling spine.

“What happened to our ground troops?” he asked in a whisper.

“Vanished into that weird mist. We didn’t even hear screams.” Roxy pointed up at the sky. It was perfectly clear, and though it was cold enough for snow to cover the ground, there shouldn’t have been mist or fog. “Looks like you’re all we’ve got. We’ll drop you by shell.”

Minutes later, Dirk hit the ground seconds before the shell did, letting the explosion’s smoke obfuscate his form to the line of soldiers several yards away from him. He still couldn’t see—the mist was on him, now, in addition to the smoke—but he could hear them muttering now,a frenzied song.

_I send a pestilence and plague_

_Into your house, into your bed_

_Into your streams, into your streets_

_Into your drink, into your bread_

_Upon your cattle, on your sheep_

_Upon your oxen in your field_

_Into your dreams, into your sleep_

_Until you break, until you yield!_

At this point, a new voice rang out while the smoke cleared, and Dirk, frozen by both terror and laughter, watched as a figure even larger than the seven foot trolls marching towards him, twelve feet tall if an inch with muscles to match and massive hair so kinky and curly it has started to dread, burst into song, voice so deep it shook Dirk’s ribs and rolled in his ribcage like a dying beast of burden.

_I SEND THE SWARM, I SEND THE HORDE_

_THUS SAITH THE LORD!_

The last note was so strong and sustained that it rippled the mist, and despite himself, Dirk shivered. The troops, all armed only with clubs, marched on past him, while the largest figure approached him and stood firm, letting Dirk crane up to look at his greasepainted face.

“Little motherfucker,” whispered the troll, “do you know who I am?”

“Imminently deceased?” asked Dirk, and the troll burst into harsh, grating laughter like earthquakes.

“LISTEN WELL, MY MINIATURE APEBROTHER. I am His Elixir-Stained goddamn Eminence, the fifteenth Grand Highblood of the Mirthful Church. Gamzee... MOTHERFUCKIN ... Makara. Know it well, invertibrother. IT’S THE LAST NAME YOUR FUCKBOY THINKPAN WILL EVER FUCKING PARSE.”

“Big talk for a big man,” said Dirk, “but you’re gonna want to put your money where your mouth is.” He turned his head back slightly at a colossal boom, and saw trolls he would never live to know were called laughsassins smashing the walls of New Peoria with nothing more than their clubs, and god damn them, it was working. He focused back on Gamzee and flashstepped into the air next to his head, ready to take him out in one shot. He didn’t notice the fist until he flew right into it, crashing back to earth with a bruise the size of a basketball forming on his chest. He felt sure ribs had broken.

“Okay. Lucky shot,” said Dirk, and shot forward despite the pain in his chest to slash at Gamzee’s ankle. Instead, the gigantic foot kicked him like he was a soccer ball ( _Yep, definitely some ribs broken,_ thought Dirk), then pinned him down with a stomp, knocking teeth out of his head and filling his mouth with blood and his head with static. Fireworks burst beneath his eyelids.

“Is this all humans have?” mused Gamzee, chuckling. “MOTHERFUCKER, YOU COULDN’T KILL MY FLATULENCE.”

 

“Oh,” said Rose. “Gamzee, you said? Dave, didn’t we meet him?” Dave said nothing. They had, and he tried every day to forget it.

“Anyway,” said Dave, “he didn’t die there, did he?” Brinner looked surprised.

“I didn’t know you knew the story, David!” he exclaimed.

“Nah, I don’t,” replied Dave, “but you didn’t say he was dead.” Brinner nodded, shrugged, and continued.

 

Public execution in five hours. Dirk knew the jig was up. He’d broken out three times already. First, the Highblood had broken his legs. Second, he’d taken Dirk’s sword and bent it into a pretzel. The last time, he’d dragged Dirk into a chamber, strapped him to a chair, and made him watch as Roxy was slowly tortured to death with every trick the malevolent troll, in his thousands of years, had ever learned.

Dirk didn’t want to go for four.

But he certainly didn’t want to die on anyone else’s terms. He thought back to all the things he’d seen when he’d escaped before, made a plan, and took the bars of his cell off. The troll guarding him had been dead for three hours. Bluebloods were strong, but apparently not very smart.

Dirk walked through the halls as if he knew what he was doing, which was sufficient to stop people from questioning him for quite some time. When he reached the chamber he’d been dragged to before, where Roxy’s body still dripped blood onto the floor, he walked over to the corner where a bright red sendificator cube stood. Just according to plan. He put in the only set of coordinates associated with him, those of his old apartment in Houston, placed his head inside the cube, and pressed send.

 

Years later, a young soldier in new arid camo, to match the desertified climate of the new Earth, walked on patrol through the reconquered Houston. He carried a black assault rifle, but was walking toward the center of some untold devastation: a ruined high-rise, with some sort of half-rotted puppets and shitty swords all around.

He picked his way through beams and detritus to a large pile of the stuff. Something black glittered atop the pile, and after checking to make sure no one was around, he started to climb. Halfway up, the pile collapsed, and he fell in a pile of puppet cock and sharp edges to the earth. When he raised his head, a skull loomed before him, crowned with perfectly sharp black sunglasses. After a moment, he carefully pulled them off of the grinning artifact, and put them on. They were warm, and after a few seconds, bright red letters beamed into his eyes.

TT: Hello, Dirk.

TT: It’s been a while.

 

“Alright, kids, storytime is over,” said Brinner. “Get to bed.” Dave nodded good night to the others—John and Jade seemed to have been sobered up by the story, Rose intrigued. He was indifferent, because he’d seen it all before, from the eyes of the hero. He clambered into his sleeping bag and sat for a while, dreaming of invisible stars.

“Hey, Bro,” he said, after a moment.

TT: Yes, Dave?

“Do you think he’d be proud of me? The other one?”

TT: Well, speaking as someone who is 95% indistinguishable from Dirk Strider...

TT: Yes. He really would be. Is that all?

“Yeah, man. That’s all. Night, Bro.”

TT: Good night, Dave.


End file.
